Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall later claims that after Clinton turned over the 30,490 emails she deemed work-related, which took place on December 5, 2014, the settings on her private server were changed so that any email not sent within 60 days would be automatically deleted. But some news reports say the setting was for 30 days instead. If this is true, the deletions must take place after January 5, 2015, or February 5, 2015, depending on which setting is actually in place.

On March 4, 2015, the House Benghazi Committee issues a subpoena ordering Clinton to turn over any material related to Libya and/or Benghazi, which followed a more limited request in November 2014.

Trey Gowdy (R), head of the committee, will complain later in March 2015, “Not only was the secretary the sole arbiter of what was a public record, she also summarily decided to delete all emails from her server, ensuring no one could check behind her analysis in the public interest. […] The fact that she apparently deleted some emails after Congress initially requested documents raises serious concerns.”

A September 2016 FBI will reveal that the deletion of Clinton’s emails from her private server won’t actually take place until late March 2015. And while the employee is supposed to change the email retention policy so some of her emails will be deleted 60 days later, he actually will delete all of her emails and then use a computer program to wipe them so they won’t be recovered later. Why this happens is still unclear. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)

Nick Merrill, Clinton’s campaign press secretary, writes an email memo to Clinton’s other core staffers (including John Podesta and Robby Mook) who are developing a strategy that is described as being “designed to plant stories on Clinton’s decision-making process about whether to run for president.”

The email names Maggie Haberman who at the time writes for Politico, but will switch to covering the election for the New York Times one month later. Merrill writes, “We have ha[d] a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politicoover the last year. We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. … [F]or this we think we can achieve our objective and do the most shaping by going to Maggie.”

According to a later article by the Intercept, “The following month, when she is at the Times, Haberman publishes two stories on Clinton’s vetting process.”

The Intercept will be given this email and others by the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 in October 2016. The Intercept will comment that the email is just one of many “Internal strategy documents and emails among Clinton staffers” that “shed light on friendly and highly useful relationships between the campaign and various members of the US media, as well as the campaign’s strategies for manipulating those relationships. … At times, Clinton’s campaign staff not only internally drafted the stories they wanted published but even specified what should be quoted “on background” and what should be described as “on the record.” (The Intercept, 10/09/2016) (Wikileaks, 10/13/2016)

Clinton aide Huma Abedin requests $12 million from Moroccan King Mohammed VI in exchange for granting the king’s request to host an international Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) (a Clinton Foundation program) meeting in Morocco. Abdein outlines the request in an email later made public by WikiLeaks: “This was [Clinton’s] idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request. The King has personally committed approx $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting.”

Abdein mentions the necessity of Clinton’s presence for a successful initiation of the metting: “If [Clinton] was not part if it, meeting was a non-starter.”

Abdein also cites a potentially related “mess” involving China and implies her responsibility for it’s creation: “It will break a lot of china to back out now when we had so many opportunities to do it in the past few months. She created this mess and she knows it.” (The Daily Caller, 10/20/16)

Jason Leopold of Vice News files a lawsuit seeking all of Clinton’s emails during her time as secretary of state. (Politico, 3/28/2015) Leopold first requested the emails in a November 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. (Vice News, 2/29/2016)

As a result of this lawsuit, in May 2015, US District Judge Rudolph Contreras will order rolling production and release of the work-related emails in the State Department’s possession in monthly batches. (Vice News, 5/19/2015)